How do you feel about Torchwood Miracle Day

The most divisive season of Torchwood. Children of Earth, I think wrapped up the spinoff Doctor Who series brilliantly. However the fourth season goes completely off the rails to be almost irreconcilable.

Children of Earth was fantastic TV. Gripping.
Miracle Day was garbage. After a few good episodes it spirals into just... unwatchable... shit. It's just shit. It's one of the shittest things I have ever watched.

I feel Miracle Day could've worked, but it was just too long. Miracle Day had 5 episodes of story but was stretched to 10 episodes. Fitting in details from every little thing. Jack and Gwen, Rex and Esther, mystery of the miracle, Gillian Kissenger story, Oswald Danes story, Jack and Angelo, Three Families, blessing and a fucking crevice in the center of the earth. Good god damn.

It was no more shit than the first series of TW to be honest (just for different reasons) but it was a wasted opportunity. Too similar to COE, and far too stretched out. I don't think it was terrible, but it was quite poor and it's probably killed off the concept for good.

But then really COE is the only fantastic series of TW anyway, so 1 out of 4 isn't good enough for it to continue anyway.

I will always prefer the original 2 series of Torchwood BY FAR to those disappointments of "serial series". Why they didn't just keep the successful formula of the first two series I don't know. Maybe just have CoE as a series finale. What really pisses me off about the last two series is we haven't really seen any aliens, which really is what the whoniverse is all about.

I don't like Miracle Day that much, but I prefer it to CoE, by far.

I wish they'd stop these appalling serial series. Just give us a damn regular one RTD! If they need to go American style, I'd recommend using the same format that Supernatural uses. An overarching storyline which some episodes will be all about, but also separate episodes with nothing to do with the arc and takes on separate cases or whatever. Also, we need more bloody aliens. We haven't really seen aliens in Torchwood since series 2.

If it had been done in five episodes it would have been great. But it was just too stretched out with too much time wasting. They were trying to do a "24" but just did not have enough plot to justify it... and "24" was known for wheel-spinning!

If it had been done in five episodes it would have been great. But it was just too stretched out with too much time wasting. They were trying to do a "24" but just did not have enough plot to justify it... and "24" was known for wheel-spinning!

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The problem, as I see it, is that RTD didn't understand why Children of Earth worked, so when he was asked to do something like CoE but bigger, he didn't know how to do it.

From the little that The Writer's Tale (second edition) covers the writing of Children of Earth, it's clear that CoE was a happy accident that worked in spite of RTD (who didn't have a clear vision of what he wanted to do and didn't understand how the story would work) and not because of him. Which is kind of ironic, in that I believe that CoE is the best thing RTD ever did in the Whoniverse and outclasses anything he did on the mothership.

So I think with Miracle Day he was trying to emulate CoE's success without understanding why it was successful.

It's difficult not to suspect that there was a conversation which went something like this...
Starz: "We loved Children of Earth..."
RTD: "Good, I've got a great high concept idea in a similar vein, another five parter..."
Starz: "We were thinking ten..."
RTD: "Did I say five? I meant ten..."
Whereas the correct answer would have been...
RTD: "10, That's fine, I've got ideas for two five parters..." [Later, after the meeting, into his phone] "Boys, they want ten! Anyone got an idea for a second five parter? Said I'd be back with full details before lunch tomorrow..."

The thing about Children of Earth is that it's essentially two ideas: a run-of-the-mill Torchwood-fights-aliens thing, and an end-of-the-world political thriller. RTD bolted on the latter idea, which was a separate project that he'd had at the back of his mind for years, when he realized that the conventional storyline others were developing, which he hadn't been paying much attention to because he was thinking about the Who specials, didn't have a meaningful final act. In The Writer's Tale he even bemoans the fact that this big notion is being wasted on "a sci-fi spin-off thriller" (or words to that effect). So the part of Children of Earth that really works is foreign to Torchwood, which never quite found its own form. I haven't seen Miracle Day, because the response was so lukewarm and because I find mediocre Torchwood difficult to watch, but I don't think CoE ever "pointed the way forward" in the manner RTD once suggested it did.

What really pisses me off about the last two series is we haven't really seen any aliens, which really is what the whoniverse is all about.

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Maybe that's what Doctor Who is about (and that's a debatable point), but it was never what Torchwood was about to my mind.

The most consistent theme throughout all four seasons of Torchwood was that whenever humans come into contact with alien people or technology or mysterioso, we manage to fuck it all up in spectacular fashion. Really, in every single case it brings out the very worst in us. The show was always about humans' reactions to this stuff, not the alien stuff itself.

As to topic, Miracle Day has some interesting concepts, but executed them rather clumsily. Its storylines either repeated earlier better-done material, went nowhere and were just abandoned, or made no sense in the first place.

It has some individual strong episodes - "Dead of Night" and "Immortal Sins" were both powerful stuff, interestingly both written by Jane Espenson. But the thing as a whole just didn't hold together.

That said, this was actually when I liked Gwen the best out of all of the series. She'd realized her full potential as a badass at this point, instead of being a neurotic mess or emotional nelly. And Jilly Kitzinger was a riot, even if her storyline had nothing to do with the rest of the show.

Children of Earth was stunningly good and completely subverted audience expectations after the embarrassing first 2 series. Gone was the obnoxious sexuality-charged environment which viewed adult storytelling as James Marsters talking about fucking poodles, while John Barrowman gurned. Instead, we got proper TV science-fiction akin to Doctor Who Season 7.

Children of the Earth was awesome. Rewatching it marathon style, though, is emotionally draining, so, for the reason of rewatchability, I think I would prefer if it had been slowed down a bit, maybe stretched out to 6 or 7 episodes.

Miracle Day, on the other hand, as others have ssaid, had the exact opposite problem, it should've been cut shorter (Maybe not down to 5 episodes, maybe only down to 6 or 7 episodes) and could've been much better (And yea, a little bit of aliens mixed in would've been nice, that one worm just wassn't quite enough, and it didn't really tie into the wholle arc of the Series)

Torchwood series two has my favorite episodes, and lines, of the show. "I'm sorry, sir, I've googled the phrase 'I shall walk the earth and my hunger shall know no bounds,' but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers."

Children of Earth, to me, is the single greatest thing Russell T. Davies ever wrote. It's rough, it's hard, it's bold, and it's intelligent. It's not light viewing at all. But it is amazing.

Miracle Day, on the other hand, is like a parody of itself. It's trying to hard to be gritty and realistic that it's just dismal, stupid and boring. There's not enough story to carry ten episodes, and they don't do anything with the characters, really. It's absolutely pathetic, from beginning to end.

If it had been done in five episodes it would have been great. But it was just too stretched out with too much time wasting. They were trying to do a "24" but just did not have enough plot to justify it... and "24" was known for wheel-spinning!

Click to expand...

The problem, as I see it, is that RTD didn't understand why Children of Earth worked, so when he was asked to do something like CoE but bigger, he didn't know how to do it.

From the little that The Writer's Tale (second edition) covers the writing of Children of Earth, it's clear that CoE was a happy accident that worked in spite of RTD (who didn't have a clear vision of what he wanted to do and didn't understand how the story would work) and not because of him. Which is kind of ironic, in that I believe that CoE is the best thing RTD ever did in the Whoniverse and outclasses anything he did on the mothership.

So I think with Miracle Day he was trying to emulate CoE's success without understanding why it was successful.